Richland County

This page is still mostly being written, much more to come!

I am not a person who, once elected, will just send endless pork barrel spending back to my district to bribe my way to reelection, geez, what is wrong with politicians in this country? Throw the bums out! Fire the rentiers and crony capitalists! Shut the door to lobbyists! Let’s get a government for the people already! Any-hoo, while I don’t believe in trying to redistribute state money to favor my constituents, I am here to represent my constituents interests at the state level. I think the most effective change comes from the ground up, that the best governance happens at the local and city level. My job is to make the resources available to enable that regional, city, community level action.

We need a close relationship between state and local government and more importantly between government and community organizations. We need a coordinated campaign to rebuild Richland County and Ohio at the same time. To that end I want to offer my ideas on what Richland County can be and how it can best work with ideas like the Ohio Investment Bank and expansion of community colleges. And should I lose this election (not bloody likely!) I’ll still be here in Richland County doing everything I can to build us a 21st century economy.

Agriculture Cluster

I think that Richland County is the perfect place to build a cluster of agricultural businesses. A cluster creates economies of agglomeration as similar businesses and suppliers are close together which leads to innovation and efficiency. This can be further improved when universities and community colleges are added to the mix. An investment in North Central State and the OSU Mansfield branch to expand agricultural training and research programs will help jump start this cluster. Combine that with the efforts of the Ohio Investment Bank to provide startup capital and resources in coordination with university technology transfer offices Richland county could be poised for a agricultural driven economic boom. This creates jobs in producing greater and greater output of agricultural goods (through GMOs, new fertilizers, new farming techniques, indoor and vertical farming, aquaponics, etc) , jobs in technology and software to manage this agricultural expansion (technology to analyze food, quality control, environmental control systems, indoor farming infrastructure, farm automation equipment, etc), and jobs transforming the raw agricultural goods (corn, soybeans, cow, pigs, leafy greens, etc) into more finished products, whatever they may be.